Andy thought about it for a moment, then shrugged, apparently uninterested in a history lesson on the Jarvik 7 or the slang unique to carrier aviators. Like Colt, he had eaten the burger made from eight ounces of spicy seasoned beef, topped with bacon, fried garlic, cheese, and egg.
Colt’s eyes sagged, and he glanced at his watch. “I should probably try and get some sleep. I haven’t seen the air plan yet, but I’m assuming it’s going to be a god-awful early recovery.”
“Hold on a second,” Andy said, fishing his cell phone from his pocket. “I think I have it in my email.”
Colt tipped back his beer and took another pull while he waited for the Greyhound pilot to tell him just how little sleep he was going to get before strapping back into his jet and flying out to the ship. He already knew he was well within the twelve-hour limit of “bottle to throttle,” but he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity for free beer — his shipmates still on the boat would have demanded nothing less.
“Yeah, here you go,” he said, handing Colt the phone. “Looks like you’ve got a zero seven hundred Charlie time.”
Colt groaned. That was a little less than six hours away and didn’t account for the transit or time needed to brief. Even clouded by fatigue and several bottles of beer, Colt knew he could count the hours of sleep he would get on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. “I need to get some shut-eye.”
“Yeah, me too,” Andy said. “My girlfriend just left, and a few of us are going to head up to Hiroshima in the morning.”
Colt slid off the stool and gave the COD pilot a sideways glance. “You do know this is a deployment, right?”
Almost as if he didn’t get the gibe, Andy brushed him off. “Yeah. I’ll be back out in two days.”
“To bring me my mail.”
“And food and other supplies,” he added.
Colt took a hesitant step away from the bar, somewhat surprised to find he could still maintain his balance. The Marine pilots shot him a questioning look, and Colt couldn’t help but wonder if they were talking about what had happened to him on the Abraham Lincoln. He shook it off and followed Andy on the short walk from the Officer’s Club to the Kintai Inn. Though there had been some truth to his barbs, Colt knew the Greyhound crews provided a vital link to the carrier and were an asset to the team.
Even if they treated deployment like a vacation.
At the air station’s main gate, a panel van passed between a pair of flags and an FA-18C Hornet on display and came to a stop underneath the guard shack’s arched white awning. The Japanese driver reached for the clipboard resting on the center console and lowered the window to wait for the Marine sentry to approach.
“Konbanwa,” Hiro Yamada said, beaming his trademark smile.
“Back again?”
He switched to heavily accented English. “Apparently somebody really likes seafood.”
The guard smiled back and leaned against the door. “Gotta see your paperwork.”
“Yeah, I know.” Hiro lifted the clipboard and handed it to the guard.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time with that,” Hiro hollered after him. “I could use the break.”
“You and me both,” the lance corporal yelled back, then disappeared inside the building.
Hiro shifted the lever into park and leaned back into the worn vinyl seat. Normally, vehicle traffic entering and exiting the base would have necessitated he pull off onto the wide shoulder while security personnel verified he had the required documentation to enter the base. But in the middle of the night, there was nobody waiting behind him in queue, so he was content sitting in the idling van and listening to the wind furling and snapping the American and Japanese flags over his shoulder.
His cell phone lit up. He glanced at it resting in the cupholder and contemplated letting the call go to voicemail. But he knew what would happen if he did that. With a groan, he scooped the phone up and answered the call.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” the gruff voice asked. Hiro recognized it immediately.
“Making my delivery to the base.”
“You’re late.”
Hiro rolled his eyes and glanced through the open window at the guard shack, hoping to see the Marine returning to wave him through. The sooner he finished his delivery, the sooner he could get this guy off his back. He opened his mouth to reply when the door opened and the guard stepped out, adjusting the patrol cap perched atop his head.
“Did you hear me?” the man asked, clearly frustrated with Hiro.
“I’ll call you back,” he replied, then tapped on the button to end the call, before tossing the phone back into the cupholder.
“Checks out,” the Marine said, handing the clipboard back.
“As usual.”
“I assume you know which way you’re going?”
He nodded and rested the clipboard on the center console. “Just another day,” he said.
“Those squids sure do eat well,” the Marine added, nodding at the crates filling the rear of the van.
Hiro grinned. He had been making deliveries for the fishermen’s cooperative going on five years. Whether he was delivering fresh parrot fish and tilapia to Club Iwakuni or frozen stock to be flown out to Navy ships, he hadn’t spent much time thinking about what he was delivering. Seafood in Japan was a staple.
But his delivery tonight was different.
The Marine sentry rapped his knuckles against the side of the van. “See you next time?”
“Mate ne,” Hiro replied, then shifted the van into gear.
As the lance corporal stepped back and Hiro eased off the brake, he couldn’t help but glance in the rearview mirror at the crates stacked neatly behind him. Each one was packed with frozen seafood, but one crate was special. He stuck his hand out the window and waved at the guard as he accelerated through the gate, already pushing thoughts of that special crate from his mind.
17
Punky slowed in the middle of the road when the Audi S3 turned left and stopped in front of a closed gate. She knew Jax was leading them to a safe house run by the CIA, but it seemed a little too conspicuous for her liking. She didn’t think a multimillion-dollar property bordering a private runway in a gated fly-in community had the low profile she was looking for.
But, then again, Jax was the declared expert on the subject.
She watched the CIA officer enter a passcode into the control panel, then waited for the large metal gate to swing open and permit them access. Once the Audi sedan began rolling, Punky steered the Challenger off the main road and followed. She stopped just inside the gate to block the private road until it had closed, scanning her mirrors for any sign of the dark gray Audi sport wagon she had seen outside the school.
There had been no sign of it since leaving La Jolla, but something about it had set off her internal alarms.
She took her foot off the brake and let the muscle car idle down the paved road that appeared to double as a taxiway for private airplanes. Looking left, she saw several large homes in varying architectural styles ranging from Mediterranean and Tuscan to modern and contemporary, each with its own private hangar set apart from the house.
Punky was halfway down the private airstrip when she saw the Audi turn left onto a driveway that angled toward a Tuscan-style monstrosity set back from the road and surrounded by trees and shrubs. From a distance, the landscaping appeared to have been planted for aesthetic purposes. But upon closer inspection, she recognized the obvious seclusion it gave the house within the fenced-in and gated community, while still preserving angles from which to defend the property.